


The Story of Loki

by ChangelingChilde



Series: Songs of Ragnarok [1]
Category: Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: F/M, Ragnarok, The Binding of Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 04:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17738999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChangelingChilde/pseuds/ChangelingChilde
Summary: Just a quick overview, really, but it can't hurt.





	The Story of Loki

This is a story about Ragnarok.

This is a story about beasts.

This is a story about love.

This is the story of Loki.

 

Once there was a man whose children were wolves and serpents, but he loved them. He loved them so, as they loved him, for even wild animals love and they were more than wild animals. They were his children.

Once there was a woman with two sons, who loved them so much that she was willing to stand in a cave for ten thousand years on the off chance of revenge against their slayer. And in the end that was what she did, bowl of poison overflowing onto her hands. After all, they were her children.

Once there was a god whose children were stolen from him, for he and they were prophesied to bring the end of the world. But if not for the theft they would not have had a reason to end the world, and isn't that just the way with prophecy?

Once upon a time, Sorrow wedded Loyalty and Wildfire bedded Victory. They were ill-fated unions, but all things are ill-fated in the end. And they had children.

 

Loki was laughter once, they say, with a song in his heart and a light in his eyes. Sigyn had no burden on her shoulders, they say, standing both tall and proud. And Angrboda was never a happy one, but she was striking, she was tall and where she walked the Earth quaked.

Now it is Loki's task to make earthquakes, in the torture he and Sigyn were abandoned to--the injustice of the Lord, you might call it, if you were the sort to believe in one. But Odin makes for a poor Lord, and the god of Abraham a poorer one, so get thy Lords behind Me and get gone.

The Gallows Ghoul punished himself with one lost eye and some little time hung from the tree, while his blood brother spent eternities burning out both in his cave, so speak not to me of Allfathers.

Jesus hung for some little time and came to life three days later and his Father felt no pain at all, so speak not of the Christian religion.

(This is not their story, it is Loki's.)

 

Loki was a giant's son, they say, adopted into godhood by Odin Allfather. Loki was a primal being, a bit of chaos left over, and people never remembered until it was too late that he never quite did what he was told. ( _Don't dress up as a milkmaid, Loki. Don't kill Baldr, Loki. Don't end the world, Loki._ )

Loki liked being a milkmaid. It was simple and no one bothered him. No one beat him or starved him or chained him up (don't end the world, Loki, they said as they gave him reason to burn their world to the ground) . . .

Loki did not like being blamed for everything. He learned that when he bore Sleipnir, far too young to understand the agony of the world. Ragnarok truly began then, when Loki's son was taken from him for the very first time. Before the breakdown of his brotherhood with Odin, before even that damnable prophecy, the first drops of the torrent fell there. There in the pain and the humiliation, though he would wear the kenning Mare-Mother with all the pride he could manage for the rest of his long long life.

 

The first wife of Loki was Angrboda ( _She Who Brings Grief_ , but mostly it came to her instead), and she was a giantess. They had three children together who were the wolf-god Fenrir and Jormungandr the World Serpent and Hel Half-Rotten. What became of Angrboda none can say, but I like to think that she is Black Witch of the Ironwood to this day. It would be one bit of light, ironically, in Loki's tale.

For the gods found their children (damn the gods forever) and tortured them and cast them out. For the crime of being different they were cast out, and for the crime of being Loki's children. Hel was set to rule the unwanted dead, those not good enough for Odin's army. Jormungandr was tossed into the sea to drown, but he became the serpent that circles all the world and the ocean can barely hold him. Fenrir was bound with a ribbon made of things that are not, and he took the god Tyr's hand as payment for the broken promise that he would be freed after.

( _Perhaps Tyr lets him; perhaps Tyr knows that it is only just._ ) This is not Tyr's story, it is Loki's.

And so Ragnarok became more than foretelling: it was set in stone. For what kind of father would not move the very heavens for his children?

 

The second wife of Loki is Sigyn, and their sons were Vali and Narvi. Mark well that she is and they were, for Ragnarok is a mother's love as well.

Loki did but help find the weapon that killed Baldr--one son of Odin Child-Thief, he could have taken more and still name Odin thus--but that was enough. He was taken and tortured, made to watch his youngest children fight to the death, and Ragnarok was as good as begun. Though it may be ten thousand years yet, wrapped in the chain that is named Narvi, watching the light go out of his wife's eyes as she sits beside him, Ragnarok is as good as over with. After all, nothing lasts forever.

 

_There is a man wild-eyed and wild-haired with chains of dripping gut that no longer bind him. He is walking out of his cave (one might call it Plato’s cave) and at his feet is all the world quaking, for he is a giant._

_He is Loki, and today the world ends._

 

All the world saw Loki’s sons die bravely. Only Loki saw his daughter gather them and take them to where there is no fighting. And when Loki had seen the world burnt to ash he called it good, and he took Hel’s hand and went away.

 

And that was the story of Loki.


End file.
